8th Amendment Court Cases

Supreme Court

Each of the following 8th Amendment Court Cases is an important case in the Supreme Court's history of rulings regarding the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Each case sets an important precedent or establishes important guidelines for what the amendment actually means. The 8th Amendment prohibits excessive fines, excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment.

8th Amendment Court CasesExcessive Bail Clause

United States v. Salerno - 8th Amendment Court Cases

The Excessive Bail Clause prohibits judges from
requiring excessively high amounts of bail for an accused person to get
out of jail before their trial. One question that the 8th Amendment leaves open, however, is whether or not the amendment requires that all
defendants be given the opportunity to post bail, or if there are some
instances, such as when a person might constitute a threat to the
community if released, when the judge can refuse to give someone the
opportunity to post bail and get out of jail.

In United States v. Salerno, 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that the "Bail Reform Act of 1984" did not violate the 8th Amendment'sExcessive Bail Clause, nor did it violate the
Due Process Clause in the 5th Amendment. The Bail Reform Act
gave the federal court permission to hold people before their trial if
they could prove the person was too dangerous to allow loose in the
community.

In this case, Anthony Salerno, a member of the mafia was arrested for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,
otherwise known as the RICO Act. The government detained him after he
was arrested and did not allow him to post bail on the grounds that he
was a danger to the community.

Salerno challenged the government, alleging that his detention before trial violated his 8th Amendment right to post bail. The Court disagreed and made a very clear statement that the Excessive Bail Clause does not promise the right to bail in every case and that the only limitation imposed by the 8th Amendment
on bail is that "the government's proposed conditions of release or
detention not be 'excessive' in light of the perceived evil."

8th Amendment Court CasesExcessive Fines Clause

Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas - 8th Amendment Court Cases

In one important 8th Amendment court case, the Waters-Pierce Oil Co.
was charged with violating Texas' anti-trust law. The fine imposed was $5,000 a day
for every day the alleged breaking of the law occurred. Waters-Pierce was
accused of violating the anti-trust law for over 300 days, making the fine over
$1.6 million dollars.

In Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas, 1909, Waters-Pierce alleged in their
counter suit that the large fine violated
the Excessive Fines Clause of the 8th Amendment.
The Court disagreed, stating that the Court:

"...cannot interfere with state legislation in fixing fines,
or judicial action in imposing them, unless so grossly excessive as to amount
to deprivation of property without due process of law... this Court will not
hold that the fine is so excessive as to amount to deprivation of property
without due process of law where it appears that the business was extensive
and profitable during the period of violation, and that the corporation has
over $40,000,000 of assets and has declared dividends amounting to several
hundred percent."

What makes this case important is that it sets up a standard for judging
whether or not a fine is "excessive." The standard set up here is that
a fine must not be "so grossly excessive as to amount to deprivation of
property without due process of law." In other words, the government must
not be able to confiscate such a large amount of property without following
an established set of rules created by the legislature.

United States v. Bajakajian - 8th Amendment Court Cases

The United States Supreme Court has overturned only
one fine as excessive
based on the Excessive Fines Clause in its 200+ years and that did not happen
until 1998.

In 1994, Hosep Krikor Bajakajian attempted to leave the United States to go to
Cyprus with $357,144 in cash to pay a debt. Leaving the country with a large amount
of cash is not illegal, but if the amount is more than $10,000 it must be reported
to the authorities. Bajakajian did not report the amount, so he was in violation
of the law. When he was tried, the government ordered that he must forfeit the
entire $357,144 because the United States Code, 18 U.S.C. § 982(a)(1) said:

"The court, in imposing sentence on a person convicted of an offense
in violation of [the aforementioned] section... shall order that the person forfeit to the
United States any property, real or personal, involved in such offense, or any
property traceable to such property."

The law was clear that the full amount should be confiscated. However, the question
at hand was whether or not it violated the Excessive Fines Clause of the 8th
Amendment.

"Comparing the gravity of respondent's crime with the $357,144
forfeiture the Government seeks, we conclude that such a forfeiture would be
grossly disproportional to the gravity of his offense. It is larger than the
$5,000 fine imposed by the District Court by many orders of magnitude, and it
bears no articulable correlation to any injury suffered by the Government...
For the foregoing reasons, the full forfeiture of respondent's currency would
violate the Excessive Fines Clause."

8th Amendment Court CasesCruel and Unusual Punishments Clause

Wilkerson v. Utah - 8th Amendment Court Cases

In an important 8th Amendment court case from 1879, called Wilkerson v. Utah,
the United States Supreme Court
affirmed a decision by the Supreme Court of the Territory of Utah that death
by firing squad did not violate the 8th Amendment's Cruel and
Unusual Punishments Clause. The Court did mention that some forms
of punishment, such as drawing and quartering, public dissecting, burning
alive, or disembowelling, would violate the clause.

Weems v. United States - 8th Amendment Court Cases

Weems v. United States, 1910, marked the first time the United States Supreme
Court reversed a lower court's decision that a punishment was indeed
"cruel and unusual."

Paul Weems was an officer of the Bureau of Coast Guard and Transportation
in the Philippines, which was then a US colony. Weems was convicted
of falsifying a document with the intent of defrauding the government.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with certain conditions to the
confinement. He was to be shackled from wrist to ankle and forced to
work at "hard labor" for the duration. Weems challenged the punishment
as a violation of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.

The Supreme Court agreed. In its opinion, the Court said that such a
serious punishment for such a minor crime was cruel and unusual and in
violation of the 8th Amendment. This case is important
because it is often viewed as having established a "principle of
proportionality" when punishments are handed down. In other words,
the punishment must be in proportion to the seriousness of the crime.

It should be noted that some people disagree with this principle,
believing that it restricts lawfully elected legislators from
determining what appropriate punishments for a crime should be,
instead giving this power to unelected judges.

The creation of the "principle of proportionality" made this one of
the most important 8th Amendment court cases.

Trop v. Dulles - 8th Amendment Court Cases

Trop v. Dulles, 1958, was one of the most important 8th Amendment
court cases because it
set a precedent for how the Court would determine which crimes were
cruel and unusual and which ones were not.

The circumstances of the Trop case were that Albert Trop, who was a
US citizen, had deserted the Army while serving in Morocco in 1944.
Several years later he tried to get a US passport, but was denied based
on the Nationality Act of 1940, which said that if a person deserted the
US Armed Services, he would lose his citizenship. Since he was no longer a
citizen of the United States, he could not be issued a passport.

Trop filed suit. The district court and the Appeals Court for the Second
Circuit agreed that Trop was no longer a citizen. The United States Supreme Court
reversed the decision, however, saying that the removal of someone's
citizenship was a violation of the 8th Amendment because it amounted to
"the total destruction of the individual's status in organized society,"
meaning this was taking away all of the person's rights. Taking away
all of a person's rights, the Court judged, was cruel and unusual.

What was most important regarding this ruling, however, was the
statement of Chief Justice Earl Warren in the majority opinion. In
explaining their examination of whether or not removing someone's citizenship
was "cruel and unusual punishment," Justice Warren stated that:

"The [Eighth] Amendment must draw its meaning from the
evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."

In other words, he was saying that what was once considered an acceptable punishment
by society may not be acceptable any more. In colonial America, for example,
branding and cutting off the perpetrator's ear were considered to be acceptable
forms of punishment, but today these are considered reprehensible. Likewise,
other forms of punishment such as burning at the stake or crucifixion
were acceptable in certain societies at one time.

What is acceptable to
society can change from generation to generation. According to the Court,
society's current standards should be considered when considering what
is "cruel and unusual." This principle has come to be known as the
"evolving standards of decency" principle. This standard
was taken into consideration for later moves of the Court such as
banning the execution of mentally retarded people and juveniles.

Chief Justice Earl Warren

It should be noted that many people reject the idea of using
"evolving standards of decency" in interpreting the 8th Amendment, including
many Supreme Court justices. Many believe that since the 8th Amendment does
not mention any such "evolving standard," it should be considered in its
historical context only, that is, that what was considered to be "cruel and unusual"
at the time of its writing is what the Founders were referring to. Only those
punishments considered cruel and unusual at the founding period are what is
meant to be banned by the 8th Amendment.

Those on this side of the argument also believe the meaning of the word "unusual" is
very clear - punishments that have not been
in use for a long time should be avoided, not punishments that have
commonly been in use, but are no longer acceptable.

Those against the "evolving standards of decency" argument also feel that
the use of this standard takes away the power from state legislatures to determine
what are and what are not appropriate punishments in their states. This, they
argue, takes away legislative power and puts the power into the hands of the
judiciary.

Another argument in favor of this position is that if a punishment
has truly gone out of favor with the public, the legislatures most likely
will reflect that change by amending the law. For example, death by hanging
has never been banned by the Supreme Court, but the process has been largely abandoned
by the states in favor of lethal injection, which is viewed as more humane. Indeed,
only 3 people have been hanged in the United States since 1976, so the changing
public opinion was reflected by legislative decision and not by Supreme Court
mandate.

Robinson v. California - 8th Amendment Court Cases

In Robinson v. California, 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that a California
law making it a misdemeanor to "be addicted to the use of narcotics" was
unconstitutional. Robinson was taken into custody and charged after a
police officer noticed what he thought were injection marks on Robinson's
arm. The officer also alleged that Robinson confessed to having used drugs
and to being an addict, facts which Robinson denied he ever said.

Robinson was sentenced to 90 days in jail for being an addict. The Supreme Court,
however, said that such a punishment for what was "apparently an illness" violated
the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the 8th Amendment. California was
essentially punishing people for a state of being, that being having an illness, rather than for a specific
act. Using an analogy, the Court wrote that even though a 90 day punishment in and of itself was not
cruel or unusual, "even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment
for the 'crime' of having a common cold."

The Court also noted that someone could violate this law without ever having
used drugs in the state of California. In other words, having "the state of
being" of an addict should not make one eligible for punishment, but instead,
an actual act must occur.

In 1968, in a case called Powell v. Texas, this case was used to challenge a
Texas law against public intoxication.

Powell v. Texas - 8th Amendment Court Cases

In Powell v. Texas, 1968, Powell was convicted of public intoxication, violating
Texas law. Powell alleged that this violated the 8th Amendment's Cruel and Unusual
Punishments Clause. He argued that since the Court had ruled against criminalizing the
state of addiction in Robinson v. California, his punishment should be overturned,
as Texas was criminalizing his addiction to alcohol.

The Supreme Court disagreed, stating that Powell "was convicted, not for being
a chronic alcoholic, but for being in public while drunk on a particular occasion."
In other words, Powell had committed a certain act against the law and this was
punishable. Robinson, in the previous case, merely had a condition and had not committed
an act. So in order for a court to legally punish someone and avoid violating the
Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, they must have committed an act against the
law and not merely been in a state of being or have a condition.

Furman v. Georgia - 8th Amendment Court Cases

Furman v. Georgia, 1972, was a landmark 8th Amendment court case
that seriously changed the way the death penalty was enforced
in the United States. It was the lead case in a series of cases regarding capital
punishment. For two centuries capital punishment was considered valid
and just and this was the first time the Court made a decision that had
serious ramifications regarding its continued use.

William Furman, a black man, was convicted of killing a man while attempting to
rob the man's house. He was given the death penalty for his crime. Furman appealed
the sentence and the Supreme Court agreed that the death penalty violated the
8th Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.

The justices in the majority were in agreement that the punishment violated
the 8th Amendment, but they did not agree in their reasoning. Justice Potter
Stewart, writing for the majority, wrote that:

"Of all the people
convicted of rapes and murders in 1967 and 1968, many just as reprehensible as
these, the petitioners are among a capriciously selected random handful upon whom
the sentence of death has in fact been imposed. My concurring Brothers have demonstrated
that, if any basis can be discerned for the selection of these few to be sentenced to
death, it is the constitutionally impermissible basis of race. But racial discrimination
has not been proved, and I put it to one
side. I simply conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the
infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty
to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed."

Click to enlarge

Justice Potter Stewart

Justice Stewart was saying that the death penalty was being handed out wantonly, arbitrarily
and capriciously, without any set of standards governing when the punishment should
be given. In the case of Furman, Stewart believed that he may have been given the death
penalty solely because he was a black man.

Consequently the Court gave two guidelines which must be followed in order to satisfy
the 8th Amendment's proscription of Cruel and Unusual Punishment. The Court stated that
the death penalty could only satisfy the 8th Amendment if the following conditions were
met:

The scheme must provide objective criteria to direct and limit the
death sentencing discretion. The objectiveness of these criteria must in turn be
ensured by appellate review of all death sentences.

Second, the scheme must allow the sentencer (whether judge or jury) to take into account
the character and record of an individual defendant.

In response, the states that then allowed capital punishment had to stop the
procedure and rewrite the laws. Many opponents of the death penalty had hoped
the Furman case would be the end of capital punishment altogether. They were very
surprised and angered when the states began to rewrite their laws in an attempt
to satisfy the Court.

In a 1976 case called Gregg v. Georgia, the concerns of the Court were
adequately addressed by what is known as a "bifurcated" trial. The states had
broken down their death penalty procedures into a "bifurcated" set of events, conducting
trials and sentencing separately and using many written standards for the
process, in accordance with the Court's guidelines set out in Furman. As a result, the
death penalty was reinstituted, albeit with many more restrictions.

Gregg v. Georgia - 8th Amendment Court Cases

The Supreme Court had essentially barred the death penalty with its 1972
8th Amendment court case, Furman v. Georgia.
In Gregg v. Georgia, 1976, the Court reaffirmed the death
penalty, agreeing that the guidelines they had established in Furman had been
met. Indeed, 35 states and the federal government rewrote their laws with
much stricter guidelines and procedures for how the death penalty would be
implemented, thus providing a very strong indication that society considered
the death penalty to be an acceptable form of punishment.

Georgia had instituted a "bifurcated trial" system, meaning the trial
was separated from the sentencing. First, guilt or innocence was determined
without considering the sentence. Second, the sentence was imposed based
on written "aggravating" factors and consideration of "mitigating" factors.

Since the Court required specific rules regarding when the death penalty
could be applied, Georgia made a list of "aggravating" factors. If any of the
aggravating factors existed in the crime, the person was eligible for the
death penalty. Aggravating factors are factors in the commission of a crime that make it more
serious than other crimes. For example, using a gun in a crime is usually an
aggravating factor because using a gun is considered more serious than not using a gun.
Other aggravating factors often include such things as did the defendant have
any previous felony charges, did he commit the crime while committing another
felony, does he provide a grave risk to society or was the crime particularly
outrageous, vile or inhuman. In the Gregg case, the Court found that several aggravating factors did exist,
thus making him eligible for the death penalty.

Secondly, the jury was allowed to consider "mitigating" factors. Mitigating
factors are factors specific to the case at hand that may call for a different judgment
than would normally be considered for a similar case. For instance, if a
person is mentally retarded or insane when they commit the crime, most people
do not think such a person should be punished in the same way a person of
normal intelligence would be punished. Other mitigating factors in crime include
such things as the defendant's age at the time of the crime, the defendant's motive
(was it done intentionally or was it an accident) and whether or not the person
was being coerced or was under extreme pressure at the time of the crime.

The Georgia law stated that once the defendant was found to be eligible for
the death penalty as a result of the presence of at least one aggravating factor,
the jury must then consider any mitigating factors. If they believed that there
were mitigating circumstances, they could reduce the sentence to life without
parole. If there were no mitigating circumstances, they could give the death
penalty.

After Furman, the states that allowed the death penalty all rewrote their laws
in line with this system. First, a bifurcated trial was used, in which the finding of guilt or
innocence was separated from the sentencing. Second, the eligibility of the
defendant was determined by written aggravating factors determined by the legislature.
Third, the jury could look at mitigating factors that might reduce the sentence to
life in prison. This decision gave the jury some discretion in considering the
individual circumstances of the
case. This procedure avoided the arbitrary and capricious application of
the death penalty the Supreme Court was so concerned about and the death penalty
continued to be used in the United States in accordance with the new procedures.

Coker v. Georgia - 8th Amendment Court Cases

Coker v. Georgia, 1977, made it illegal to execute someone for the crime of rape.
The decision effectively made it illegal to execute someone for any other crime
less serious than murder. Erlich Anthony Coker was serving multiple sentences for kidnapping,
rape, aggravated assault and one count of first degree murder when he escaped, only
to commit another rape and armed robbery.

Coker was given the death penalty for this rape, which decision was appealed to the
Supreme Court. In its decision, the Court agreed that Coker should not be executed.
The Court invoked the "evolving standards of decency" reasoning mentioned above
in Trop v. Dulles, 1958, arguing
that Georgia was the sole state left that allowed the death penalty for rape. All other
states had banned it by this time. This made it clear to the Court that society's opinion
about the justice of execution in the case of rape had changed.

The Court also invoked the "principle of proportionality," from the aforementioned
Weems v. United States, 1910, stating that, while rape
was a very serious crime, it did not rise to the level of taking someone's life, therefore,
taking the life of the perpetrator was out of proportion to the crime.

In Kennedy v. Louisiana, 2008, the standard that execution could only be done
legally in the case of murder was challenged once again. In this 8th Amendment court case, the
Louisiana Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana law that sentenced child rapists to
execution. The Louisiana court held that this was consistent with Coker v. Georgia
and that the mitigating factor of the age of the victim is what made the difference.

The United States Supreme Court disagreed. Only five states had similar such laws
allowing for the execution of child rapists, thus not constituting a national consensus
on the issue. Only one person had been executed for rape in the United States since 1964.
The Court made it clear that execution was not an acceptable punishment under the
8th Amendment under any circumstances except for murder. The only other type of crime
for which the death penalty is allowed besides murder, is crimes against the state - things
such as treason and spying against the country.

Atkins v. Virginia - 8th Amendment Court Cases

In Atkins v. Virginia, 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that it is a violation of
the 8th Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to execute someone who
is mentally retarded. The decision reversed a previous Court decision in
Penry v. Lynaugh, 1989 that did allow execution of mentally retarded individuals.

United States Supreme Court

Daryl Atkins was convicted of the August 16, 1996 killing of Airman Eric Nesbitt,
a soldier from nearby Langley Airforce Base. Atkins and an accomplice had forced
Nesbitt to give them money from an ATM and then shot him. Atkins was sentenced to
death, in spite of the fact that it came out he only had an IQ of 59 during the
trial. The decision was appealed, arguing that it was a violation of the 8th
Amendment to execute a mentally retarded person.

The Supreme Court reversed its previous decisions allowing the execution of
mentally retarded people based on a perceived shift of public opinion, again using
the "evolving standards of decency" argument. The Court
came to the conclusion that the public had shifted its opinion because a majority
of states that allowed the death penalty had also banned executing the retarded.

In addition, the Court made a lengthy discussion of the fact that mentally retarded
persons were not fully able to understand their actions and the ramifications of
their actions on others. Because the mentally retarded defendant was not able to
understand why he was being killed, reasoned the Court, it was cruel and unusual
to execute him. Executing a mentally retarded person also failed to provide a
deterrent to other mentally retarded persons who might consider committing a crime
because they couldn't understand why the other mentally retarded person was being
executed anyway.

In their dissent, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist
strongly criticized the ruling, saying that there was no national consensus, nor did
they believe that the 8th Amendment allowed using such criteria for judging what was
"cruel and unusual." Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the minority:

"seldom has an opinion of this court rested so obviously upon
nothing but the personal views of its members."

Roper v. Simmons - 8th Amendment Court Cases

At the age of 17, Christopher Simmons was charged with murder for breaking into a woman's
home, tying her up and throwing her off a bridge in Missouri. He received the death
penalty for the crime. Later, based on Atkins v. Virginia, 2002, which reversed the
death penalty for retarded persons due to "evolving standards of decency," a Missouri court repealed
Simmons' sentence and lessened it to life without the possibility of parole.

The State of Missouri appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States.
The appeal stated that it was cruel and unusual, and therefore a violation of the
8th Amendment, to execute someone whose crime had been committed before they were
18.

In Roper v. Simmons, 2005, the Supreme Court made one of its
most important 8th Amendment court case rulings, agreeing with Simmons and
the death penalty was overturned. The
Court reversed itself from a previous ruling in Standford v. Kentucky, 1989, in which
it had allowed the death penalty for minors who were 16 or 17 at the time of their
crime. The Court stated that a national consensus against executing minors was
developing in the United States, due to the fact that 18 of the 38 states that
allowed the death penalty had already made it against the law to execute minors.
The minority dissented that 18 states hardly made a "national consensus."

Graham v. Florida - 8th Amendment Court Cases

Terrance Jamar Graham was charged as an adult for armed burglary
with assault and battery in Florida. He was 17 at the time of the crime. He
received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

The Supreme Court ruled in Graham v. Florida, 2010, that a life sentence without possibility of parole
violated the 8th Amendment if the defendant was a minor. The Court believed
that minors should be held to a different standard than adults and that
since minors have less self-control, are less responsible and are not fully
aware of the consequences of their actions as an adult would be, they should
be given the opportunity to rehabilitate and reenter society. The Court
stated that life without possibility of parole for a minor was justified
only in the case of murder.